Hi Patrick,
I'm very glad to have nominated you for the ballot, and I look forward to
working with you :)
First, I agree with Steve and Robin. I think that we should make one TC
with subcommittess, draft a new charter, and send out a call for
participation. The people who are only interested in Geolang, for example
can participate in the subcommittee.
Benefits:
1. Renewal after a long period of change.
2. We can send out a new call for participation and get new members.
3. Consolidate our resources and have fewer meetings.
4. We can be more focused in our activities.
5. We have only one TC members site to manage with all of the other basic
administrative chores. (Responsibilities most likely falling on, well, you
know who.)
We can submit a ballot and see what everyone thinks. If we decide to merge
the committees, then I would like to run for co-chair. Anyone else, please
feel free to nominate yourselve too.
>*Patrick
>You asked in a post earlier today if funding might be coming that would
>support teleconferences for the TC.
>Just as a conversation starter, how often do you think the TC (assuming a
>program of work) would need to meet by teleconference (as opposed to chat
>or email)?
Well, we can begin by looking at the TC Process for OASIS :)
At a minimum, we need to conduct either a meeting or electronic vote
within a 6 month period. That means we would only need two
meetings/electronic votes per year.
Very active OASIS committees have monthly meeting teleconferences and a
face to face meeting each quarter (I take these commitees seriously).
I guess we can be somewhere in the middle. One teleconference every 6 or
8 weeks may be realistic, and one face to face meeting/year is doable for most.
If we are better at keeping track of proprosals, review of documents and
versioning we can really make progress. Maybe Lars Marius wouldn't mind
us using his CVS for tracking of documents.
I still have a proposal on the table from Feb 2002 on Best Practices for
Published Subjects Documention Stucture which I had almost forgotten about
(To my surprise it was recently cited in an article on "Semantic Anchors
for XML" in IBM's Developer Works by Uche Ogbuji.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think20.html
I think there is still interest in published subjects :)
>Would it be necessary for the call-in number to be 1-800 for most
>participants or would it be enough to have the conferencing part of the
>call sponsored?
Whatever we can get would be nice. Teleconferences that I book usually
cost somewhere around 400-500 USD for a 2-hr conference. This is not a
trivial amount. If the sponsor can book an 800 number for participants,
that would be great, and we would get more participation, I think, but I
would guess that the cost would go up. Some companies have their own
teleconference system which may be cheaper.
I recently ran a workshop (which included KTs and Topic Maps) for the
Schlumberger Technical Community in Paris. There was much enthusiasm and I
would guess that I may be able to get some teleconference support. Well,
my situation is a little better than last week :)
I would hope that each person in the committee (representing some company)
sponsor at least 2 teleconferences/year. We should set up the list and
month for the sponsorship and make sure that we thank the sponsors for
this. Mondeca did this for us countless times for the first two years. It
would be good to send a belated thanks, I think.
>Would an hour a month be enough time?
>
>Just trying to get a feel for what you (or anyone else, don't be shy)
>thinks would be effective procedural stuff that would result in real progress.
Before we set up any teleconferences, we need to also get more
participation on these mail lists and see who is really a member. We need
to keep a roster of activity and follow OASIS rules. There are a few
people who are members and who are really only acting as observers.
I think that those that did not vote for a chair and for the ballot due on
the 24th can effectively be removed from the roster as members.
>I assume we would all prefer monthly week long meetings in Aruba but that
>is probably out of reach unless we get reconstruction funding from some
>not to be named major government. So, let's assume that we are looking for
>the most economical yet effective alternative.
Actually, not me. I do not want to get on a plane for a 16 hour trip every
month! Once a quarter is still too much!
We can do this all in a ballot. It is the easiest and most efficient way
to get feedback from most of the people here.
>Hope you are having a great day!
Yes, you too Patrick!
Cheers,
Mary